The opinion produced by engaging with any of the topic Annalisas on this site is not to be treated as a medical opinion, since this can only be offered by a medically-qualified person. It is an opinion about a health decision which combines the evidence, processed by health professionals, with the personal values entered by the user.

The opinion is not to be interpreted as advice or recommendation and the user should make any decision in their own chosen way, consulting a health professional if and when they believe it appropriate to do so.

The opinion is based the expected value principle, which means multiplying the ratings for the performance of each option on each criterion by the importance weight assigned to the criterion by the user and summing across all criteria. It treats every future year (month, week) of life as equally important, whenever it will occur in relation to the present. It assigns the same rating (100%) to the best option on each criterion to ensure the user’s weights are properly reflected in the opinion. (For more details see ‘The case for expected value’ .)

Some of the Annalisas address a decision that concerning future health events and outcomes that may or may not happen to the user. The Annalisa opinion produced assumes the user is not currently experiencing any relevant symptoms and is based on the absence of contraindications to the treatment options, except for those explicitly present in the program. If the opinion favours a treatment or treatments that requires medical prescription or delivery it is assumed that all contraindications, comorbidities and events in the users\'s medical history will be taken into account by their clinician at that point. The Annalisa opinion reflects the best estimates that can be made about the user NOW, without detailed knowledge of their medical or wider life and behavioural history. (It is likely, but not certain, that such information will improve the quality of the decision.) NOW is emphasised because we assume that the user is seeking the best decision at this point of time. If more information becomes available, we assume that this will lead to a new decision. For example, if a rare side effect happens to occur, after the users goes on to a particular medication, the new decision would probably be to change the treatment. However, this does not mean that the original decision was not the best at that point.

All responses may be used in our research, necessarily anonymously because we ask for no personal identification. Apart from age and sex, personal characteristics are requested only when they are relevant modifiers of the ratings entered into the program

If the Save for Later functionality is used , but the user does not Resume within 14 days, their data may not be available.